


After Winter, Spring

by genarti



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bechdel Test Pass, Canon Era, Catholic Character, Chronic Illness, Fantine & having agency in her own life, Female Friendship, Fix-It, Gen, Hugo's Narrative Voice - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Major Illness, Non-Graphic Child Abuse, Pastiche, Sort of fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-03
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:44:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fantine lives after all.  Not as much changes as you might think -- except for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Winter, Spring

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Ryfkah for betaing, cheerleading, and for the initial idea which was (as so often) all her fault. Thanks also to littledust for being a cheerleading writing buddy, and to spiderfire, Cheyinka, and Adiva for helping me write Catholicism. Any remaining errors are of course mine.
> 
> Warnings for references to offscreen child abuse; the child worst abused is safely out of that household, but others aren't, and neither the abusers nor some of the bystanders see the problem. (In other words: this deals with Montfermeil and Cosette's Lark years.) Nothing worse than canon, but not a lot better either.

Sister Simplice came down the stairs from Father Madeleine's darkened room, a purse in one hand, a note in the other, her eyes red-rimmed, her face thoughtful, resolute, very pale. She who always seemed a wax taper had become marble. Still, it was clear that she had wept. She went down the hall to the infirmary.

"Sister Simplice!" cried Sister Perpétue, quite agitated. She was wringing her rough red hands. "Have you heard? Oh, awful things. Monsieur the Mayor, they say he has been arrested! Arrested as a convict! Madame Victurnien said he had been thrown in prison -- the widow Paillard says no, he burst free like a wild bear, he fought free and fled into the night -- oh, just imagine!"

"'Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying,'" quoted Simplice, taking refuge in doctrine with a sense of relief. "Whatever has happened, we will learn the truth of it in good time." Her mind was a whirl. She had lied! She, who held lies to be Satan's tool, had lied! That it was to the police was immaterial. Simplice had the straightforward equality of the religious mind, that holds beggars as great as kings and earthly law in a polite contempt. A lie to Javert was the same to her as a lie to the poorest whore in the gutter. And yet she could not repent it. "Oh!" she cried suddenly, struck. "Oh, and I did not tell him -- but would it have changed a thing if I had?"

"Sister Simplice," said Perpétue, astonished, "I do not understand in the least what you mean. And anyway, is it gossip to speak of the Mayor when he runs this infirmary, he gives so much good charity for our work -- oh, the poor folk of the town, if it's true! The good Mayor, a convict! Can you imagine?"

Sister Simplice was preoccupied by matters that, to her narrowly focused mind, were far more important than the little question of whether a good man could be an escaped convict. Stealing was a sin, lying a sin, murder a sin -- but God judges sin. Sister Simplice did not. She condemned all, forgave all without offering absolution beyond her right, cared for and doctored all; she commended souls to God; the same strict rule she held as the yardstick for all, but on her own soul alone did she measure the inches, and those to the smallest fraction. "Perpétue, where is the curé? And poor Fantine, that poor mother, is she dead? She breathed last I saw, but only barely -- such a terrible shock she took, and she has been so long near death -- surely she cannot be alive still? Has she gone to God?"

"No!" said Sister Perpétue; "she is just as you saw." She was a little diverted from even the lurid tale of Father Madeleine's secret past by such a miracle as Fantine's continued existence. "Praise God, mysterious in his workings, she lives yet. I do not expect her to live the night -- well, I did not expect her to live out the day, but she has -- but perhaps God has something yet in mind for her. But I think she will die soon. She is very weak. She has not woken; she will not take water or broth. She might be a corpse, except that she breathes. It rattles in her lungs."

The two sisters crossed themselves.

"The curé?"

"Why, he is in the chapel."

Simplice left her companion without another word.

* * *

The curé was astonished when Sister Simplice appeared in the chapel, produced a note from the convict who had been Father Madeleine, and then told him she wished to take confession immediately. He was flabbergasted when she confessed, quite calmly, that she had lied.

"What!" was all he could utter. "What!"

"I have lied," Simplice repeated. Her head was bowed; she spoke to her confessor, and thence to God. "I told the police inspector that I had not seen the mayor -- that was a lie. I told the police inspector I spoke to none but God -- another lie. The mayor was there. He has gone now. I am very sorry to have sinned. I regret the offense to God. But I cannot truly repent. I confess my shameful inability. It seemed to me to be needful to save the mayor, and that to have done otherwise would have been the greater sin of delivering a good man to an evil fate. I am contrite for my failure to repent my sin."

The curé was at sea. For any other parishioner, he would have had a simple enough task; he had been a priest for many years. Any priest of long standing has heard every evil under the sun, and every shade of contrition. But for Sister Simplice! Her confession, scrupulous and regular, had never contained any sins but the most venial, and sincere contrition for each. And now this! It was not the magnitude of the sin, a small lie with virtuous intent. It was the sinner.

The curé reminded himself that she was only one more member of his flock. He should treat her as he would any other. He consulted his heart and his vows; assigned a penance, perhaps greater than he might have given a more worldly woman for so minor a sin, but Simplice seemed grateful for the prayers and the day's fast. He gave her the _te absolvo_.

That sacred duty completed, the confessor reverted to a curé, the sinner to a sister. He studied the note with some perplexity. Simplice had read it earlier. She waited quietly. It was very clear: "I beg Monsieur the Curé to take charge of all that I leave here. From it he will please defray the expenses of my trial, and of the burial of the woman who died this morning. The remainder is for the poor." But the woman was not dead.

It seemed likely that she would become so soon. Funds, then, would be dedicated to her care, her burial once all cares had fled: a pauper's grave in the potter's field, for a prostitute's corpse and a convict's money. Why not? It remained a Christian burial, and she was a public woman. The rest of the money would be free to go to the poor, who as living souls would need it more. The curé was content with his decision.

* * *

Winter turned from snow to rain and mud, a grey misery which, as with some miseries of human lives, contained in it the hope of brighter days, far away though they seemed in the chill; and then suddenly, spring. Buds opened, hearts warmed. The wet earth showed suddenly that it had been soaking up water to a purpose, and that purpose was life.

Fantine did not wake, but neither did she die.

She slipped from sleep to delirium, and from delirium back to sleep. She wept, her eyes rarely open and never truly seeing; she cried in a weak hoarse voice for Cosette, or sang cracked lullabies to her pillow. Her thin arms reached feebly to encircle air, and with air she was at times content; at other times she wept and reached and could not be comforted. She swallowed water when it was put to her lips, swallowed porridge, took the bitterest nostrums, lived. Her hair, once golden, was now a thatch of grey straw. Only her long golden eyelashes remained, like fine feathers laid upon her fragile skin. There was no pink in her cheeks. She coughed often. Illness after poverty had hollowed her to a dry reed. Her spirit seemed to shine through her like a guttering flame through paper; she had become a pitiable ghost of a woman.

But she did not die.

Sister Simplice, who had devoted herself to Fantine's care in the days -- happier days, they seemed now! -- of Father Madeleine's infirmary, continued to attend to her patient in the sadder days of spring and summer. The mayor's house was no longer Father Madeleine's, for Father Madeleine was Jean Valjean, long gone to the hell of Toulon. The new mayor had reclaimed his house from the Lazarines. Fantine had been moved to the hospital, a smaller building and now doubly cramped from the influx of patients from the mayoral infirmary. The two sisters slept now in an attic room, cheap and drafty, without complaint. Fantine lay in a cot, veiled by mended curtains, shrouded in linen scrubbed by Perpétue's strong hands, to her left a grandmother dying slowly of consumption, to her right a milkmaid who had lost a leg to a bad fall followed by gangrene. The grandmother died, the milkmaid went home with a crutch and no employment, a poor laundress and a fishmonger took their beds. The room was full of coughing.

One day in late summer, Fantine opened her eyes. They were still very blue, and dreamy as a child's. "Sister," she whispered, in a rusty rasp of a voice, "oh! Dear sister, I had the most terrible dream. But now, do you know, I feel quite warm."

* * *

Fantine soon slipped back into the merciful embrace of sleep, but the long dream was over, the winter finally passed. She had turned the corner. She woke at first only occasionally, but as the weeks passed and summer drifted towards autumn her clear blue eyes opened more and more often. Her wet cough lessened at last.

For some weeks she remained too weak to speak much. Twice she asked after the mayor, five times after Cosette, but each time sleep claimed her again before any reply could have come, and Simplice was spared the difficulty of answering. But this could not last, now that Providence had allowed Fantine to live, and soon enough came the day Simplice's kind heart had been dreading. "Dear sister," whispered the hoarse voice, "where is the good mayor? I have dreamed -- oh, I cannot say it -- where is he? I have been asleep when he comes, I must have been, it's only that I'm so tired all the time, I cannot seem to keep my eyes open however I try. I do try, you know. I do try, for I want to see the mayor. I want to be well so I can see my little angel. She must be here by now. Perhaps she comes to watch her mother sleep? No, perhaps that would frighten her, she's such a little creature, only this high, so sweet and gentle, she mustn't be frightened, but now I am quite awake. Please, sister, where is the mayor? Where is my Cosette?"

And her eyes stayed open, and beseechingly fixed upon Simplice's face.

All the thought Simplice had bent upon this matter could not prevent her distress at meeting Fantine's gaze, those blue eyes open and desperate like a child's in the thin wan face. Still, she had expected the question. "The mayor was obliged to go away," she said. "He did not want to leave you, but it was necessary. Fantine, you must rest."

"Ah!" cried the unhappy woman. "I dreamed something like that, but -- no, no, it cannot be. I have had terrible dreams. I don't know if you've ever been so ill, sister -- I think you must not have been -- you're so pure and good, God wouldn't send you the suffering I have had -- but one has such dreams, it's really awful, and you wake and you think they might be real. Where is Cosette? Let me see her. Please, you must let me see her. I shall be ever so quiet and good, I'll rest all day, I'll be quiet as long as you like, only let me see my little darling. I will lie right here and kiss her rosy little cheeks and hands. Sister, let me see my Cosette."

Sister Simplice's gentle heart trembled. She wished for better news, but she had none to offer. "The innkeeper and his wife have not yet sent her from Montfermeuil," she said, voice low, eyes cast down, cheeks white with unhappiness. "The mayor -- Monsieur Madeleine, before he was obliged to leave, he wished to go and fetch her himself, but he was quite unable to stay so long." 

She called the former mayor 'Monsieur Madeleine,' for still she called him that in her heart, and in this moment she had entirely forgotten that his name was properly Jean Valjean. She had never quite brought herself to say to herself, 'even the name Madeleine was a lie.' She told herself that perhaps he had been called Madeleine first by another, or perhaps that as she herself had been born to earth under another name, and born to Christ with the name Simplice, he had taken on the name 'Madeleine' in token of the companion of the Savior of mankind, who welcomed criminals and fallen women to His redemption. By such little self-deceptions humanity steers itself through the shoals of life. Even the purest and most upright of us are prey to them. Let us not judge Simplice too harshly for this lie of the heart. She would judge herself. She spent her days on her feet ministering to the poor and sick, her evenings on her knees in prayer, her nights asleep with prayer in her dreams; and Madeleine had been charitable to the town.

Fantine cried out, a wordless rasping groan. "Not here?" Her thin fingers plucked at Sister Simplice's sleeve in deep agitation. "Cosette, not here? Oh! Has God not forgiven me, not forgiven me my sins for Cosette, that she is not here? The mayor gone -- Cosette not here -- Cosette still away -- oh, sister, no, no, it cannot be. I know I have been bad, I know it, I don't deserve my little angel, but I love her so. She deserves a mother. And they're so greedy, that innkeeper and his wife, I didn't know it at first. She's sickly, my little girl, she had a fever. Fevers are awful things. Sister, please, kind sister, good sister, you will send for her, won't you?" In her anxious frenzy she had risen up on her elbows, Fantine who could barely lift her head from the pillow, and her wild eyes stared at Simplice. "No one could say no to a good sister of the Lord. I know they'll trust her to you. Maybe they're worried for the journey -- she's so delicate -- but they'll know that good sisters will take care that my Cosette travels safely. The mayor can't do it, you said, he has to go away, you said, I don't understand it but very well, he can't, that's that. Won't you write for him? Please, it's not for me, it's for my little darling's sake."

What could Simplice say but yes? "Monsieur the mayor settled all debts," she said. "I will ask the curé to write."

Fantine seized the sister's hand with a kind of wild strength, kissed it fervently, and fell back to the pillows in a swoon. It was another week before she woke properly again.

* * *

The curé was reluctant. He explained his position to Sister Simplice. She had always made him a little nervous, with her smooth white face and smooth waxen manner and her obdurate, blameless conscience; he had managed to almost forget her astonishing confession, since with atonement her outward manner had returned to its ordinary imperturbability. The ground may seem so after an earthquake. Consequently he was a little brusque.

It was not, the curé explained, that he bore Fantine any ill-will, despite the folly and sin of her past profession. He certainly bore none to the child Cosette. The trouble was merely a matter of precedent. Did they not have their hands full in caring for the souls and bodies of their flock in Montreuil-sur-Mer? Why should they establish the precedent of writing letters, summoning children, importing relatives from other towns? Besides, the child was no doubt happy enough, since the mother had not hesitated to leave her at the inn to begin with. It was his opinion that Fantine's strength of feeling arose from feminine hysteria and the obsessive concentration of thoughts that can sometimes result from grave illness.

Simplice heard him out. She was immovable. In the politest possible manner, she reminded the curé that Christ had called upon His believers to give cheerfully and without stint; that the innkeepers were known to be greedy schemers from the letters they had returned to the mayor; that Father Madeleine had left money to pay for Fantine's burial, which should be given to Fantine's expenses now. She opined that Fantine would likely recover more speedily with Cosette by her side, and sicken without her. The child was necessary for the mother's health.

The curé spoke further of practicality. Simplice spoke further of conscience. The curé was not, at heart, a bad sort.

The letter was written.

The reply came, days later: the Thenardiers refused to be so cruel (as they said) as to send a young child off alone in a stagecoach or mail carriage, and the inn could not spare them in such a busy season. They would release young Cosette only to her mother's embrace. Besides, certain debts were owed still, totaling 200 francs. They enclosed a bill, detailing various expenses of clothing, medicine for a chill the child had taken, food, &c.

"Well!" said Perpétue, regarding the letter in her hand. "It's clear what they think of charity."

* * *

Who could be spared to travel all the way to Montfermeil for a child? Perhaps if it had been a simple matter of handing over money, receiving a child, a volunteer might more easily have been found, but the Thénardiers seemed determined to make the matter as complicated as possible. Fantine had no money to compel another to run such a thankless errand for her.

In her rough, warm, worldly heart, Perpétue wondered if the child Cosette had already died, and if that lie was the source of the Thénardiers' reluctance to send her. The deception exposed would mean no more money, even the small amounts Fantine had been able to send. But, wisely, she did not speak of this question to the others. Simplice was too pure to think of such evils of the human heart unprompted, and Fantine had never fallen to such a level of despair. Cosette was her one source of continual light, and that light had never faltered. As for the curé, Perpétue felt he did not need the encouragement to allocate Madeleine's funds elsewhere. Fantine had touched her heart too. She hoped she might be proved wrong in her suspicions.

In the end, the agreement was thus. Fantine, when she was well enough, would go to Montfermeil to retrieve her child personally, as the Thénardiers had insisted. Sister Simplice would accompany her. Until then, the money the Thénardiers had written on their bill would be forwarded by mail, along with a letter stating that the mother would retrieve her child when possible.

Fantine was determined. She was grim, obsessed, wild with hope, starved and hollow-cheeked, a shadow, a ferocious mother, too weak to stand. She set about the business of getting well.

* * *

It was slow work. In September the night air turned chill, rain fell often; a fire in a warehouse of the rosary trade Father Madeleine had once overseen put a dozen workers in the hospital with bad burns, and five more in the cemetery; the airs of the hospital were thick and close despite all attempts to air it out. Already, misery was growing throughout Montreuil-sur-Mer. There was no room to give Fantine privacy, save by keeping quieter patients in the beds near hers when possible. They quarreled, coughed, bewailed their fates, wished for God's mercy, coughed more with chests hurt by smoke. All this was a strain on already weakened lungs. At the same time, Fantine learned what the sisters had hitherto kept from her, that the gentle Father Madeleine had been sent to prison as an escaped and dangerous convict: another shock. In short, Fantine took sick once more. An awful setback. She was feverish for days. It was a full month before she could sit up again, and two before she could stand unaided. Mid-November.

Every waking day, she asked for Cosette.

To pass the time, Sister Simplice began teaching her to read. "It may be useful to your mind," said she, "and it will certainly be useful to your soul, for you will be able to read the Bible. That is a comfort to the heart at every turn. Here is a little one in French. See! This is your name, Fantine, that I have written on the inside cover here. It is yours."

Fantine wept. She had owned nothing so nice as a little five-sous Bible in three and a half years. She had not been given a little gift like this since Felix Tholomyés had showered her with kisses and little presents -- and if he had given her the greatest joy of her life, he had also given her the greatest grief. "Yes," she wept, "good sister, yes. Thank you. Thank you. I will read the Bible, when I can; it will teach me to be good, for you know I've never been really bad, I've done wrong but I didn't want to. I've loved the Lord as well as I could. I never learned to read or write. Will you teach me to write too, sister?"

"Yes," said Simplice.

"Then I will write to the innkeeper and his wife as well. I will write to Cosette. She will know her mother remembers her, she will know her mother is coming; I will write to my little angel in my own hand. They won't have taught her to read, but someone can read it to her. Oh, sister, I am ready to learn now. Let's begin, please. I will work hard every day."

And she did. Love is the world's greatest motivator; the most powerful steam engine cannot compare. By the start of December, Cosette had been sent four different letters. None of them were given to her.

* * *

In January of 1824, a few days after Epiphany, the mail-carriage brought two women to Montfermeuil. An unusual cargo! One was a sister of the Lazarist Sisters of Charity, who spoke rarely and quietly, whose face was a narrow oval within her wimple, whose skin, pale, faintly freckled but ageless, had the peculiar translucence of virtue; she looked around herself often with a gentle curiosity. The other was old, or seemed so. Her hair was grey beneath its modest cap, her face lined and weary. She was an invalid. She coughed at times, though she was wrapped in many shawls of warm wool. She had dozed often on the trip, only to start awake and ask with a wild eagerness, "Sister, are we at Montfermeuil? Oh, tell me we have reached my darling!" Every time, the sister had soothed her to soften the negation she was obliged to provide. But now they had reached Montfermeuil indeed. The postman stumped off to deliver his letters and packages. The women disembarked, the invalid leaning on the sister's thin arm. They made their way towards the town inn.

The postman was often paid to bring passengers along to this town or that; he had no opinion on the matter; he had tried once or twice to draw the women into conversation, failed, lapsed back into his customary bored silence. He was as incurious as his horse. No help for gossips here. He was asked later about his passengers by curious townsfolk, and with the lubrication of wine he happily provided what he had noticed, but it was very little. "A sister, yes. I could not say how old she was." The other, an invalid? "Yes, yes." What illness? "Oh! I don't know. Something or other. She was very poorly." What was their business? "I didn't think to ask." 

Some men are born to travel the same road every day of their lives. If it contents them, ought we to judge or to envy?

* * *

The women entered the inn. The Thénardiess was there stirring a kettle with one hand and reading a cheap novel with the other. She was astonished. The usual clientele of the Sergeant of Waterloo was composed of laborers, farmers, merchants of the town, rough jokes, complaints about business, occasional travelers on the postal carriage or stage. A veiled sister, never. One accompanied by an elderly woman in simple clothes, not dressed with the finery of a woman rich enough to afford a traveling companion, was doubly strange. "Ah!" she said, and again more doubtfully, "Ah!" She tucked her novel into a pocket and smoothed red hands down her apron. "Madame, sister, you've come for lodging?"

She did not recognize Fantine, for whom thirty years had passed in the course of five.

Fantine, for of course it was she, was looking about at the dingy dining room. She had never been inside. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the room was empty save for one drunk asleep in the corner. His name was Pouliquen, and he was a day laborer, working for any who would pay for a day's employment, loved by none and hated by none, fond of wine and gossip and little else. He passed most afternoons in this manner.

"No," said Simplice.

"Ah!" said Madame Thénardier once more. "A meal? We have very good food. I don't like to brag, but I've been told it often." 

This was a lie.

"No," said Simplice.

Fantine turned her thin face to them. On it was a terrible serenity. "I have come for my daughter."

The Thénardiess was dumbfounded. "Your daughter!"

"Yes. Where is Cosette?"

For five years, no one had wanted Cosette. The Thénardiers scorned her; the good folk of the town ignored her; her mother, to the Thénardiers, was nothing more than a source of funds, and those scanter than their continual greed wished. Then, a rush of funds; then letters, empty of banknotes and thus worthless to their grasping hearts; then the old man. And now Fantine herself! With a holy sister! So much interest in one pitiable scrap of humanity. It beggared credibility.

The Thénardiess gaped like a fish. She did not know what to say.

Fantine trembled. "Where is she?" she repeated. A mother deprived of her joy: she was fearsome. In her cracking voice was an earthquake.

Her husband might have found a lie ready to his lips, but his wife could think of none. She was too stupefied. "A man took her away."

Simplice gasped. Fantine shuddered. She stared. She had no words. A thunderclap had sounded in her heart.

Madame Thénardier recalled the story her husband had chosen. "It was her grandfather," she said. And, feeling this needed expansion: "A good gentleman, very respectable. We would not have given her for less. She was a lazy little brute--" but then she remembered that she was speaking to the child's mother. There was little kindness in her soul; but she loved her daughters. Besides that, she had in her a store of animal cunning; or perhaps we should say, human cunning, for animals cannot compete with human greed. Fantine had been a source of money before. Perhaps she might be made to provide money again. "The little dear," she corrected herself, with a ghastly smile meant to be sweet. "It broke our hearts to see her go! Children will be lazy, but you love them all the same. But, well, he was family. That's what he said. Family, what can you say?"

Fantine shuddered. She looked as if she might fling herself upon the other woman, biting and howling. Her hands had become clawed knots. Her eyes were awful. "I wrote her!" she cried. Her lost teeth made her mouth a black wound. " _I_ am her family! You need only have sent her, I told you to send her! I told you to send her to me!"

"The carriages are very dangerous for a child alone," said the Thénardiess, obdurate. "We had bills. It's hard these days to run a respectable inn, you know. To send that little--" and she caught herself again, "--dear child off, well, we could hardly have lived with ourselves in that case! But a grandfather, that's only his right. We were sad to lose her. But you cannot blame us for thinking the grandfather came with the mother's knowledge. Well, Fantine, you have only to seek out her grandfather to find your girl." And she smiled. It was a horrible smirk.

Fantine covered her face with her hands. "Gone!" she sobbed. "My Cosette, not here!"

Simplice had been listening in horror. Such a turn of events had never occurred to her. She spoke sternly. "Madame, you were given care of this child. Your bills were paid. Every one you asked was paid. Do not speak of bills. You were told this poor woman would come and that she would claim her child, since you would not send her as you were asked. And now you say a man has taken her! Did you not account for where the child was to be taken? To what address? What name did the man give?"

The Thénardiers had never been told the father's name, nor bothered to invent one for the fictitious grandfather. "Eugène Rothelin. He left no address."

Fantine wailed softly.

Simplice folded her hands at her belt. "You cannot object if we look around." Her soft voice rang like a clear bell in that empty, filthy room. "You have not been honest with this poor woman. If Cosette is not here, we will leave. If she is here, we will leave, and she will accompany us. Continue your work, please. We will not disturb your inn or its guests."

She had the force of virtue, quiet and inexorable. Madame Thénardier would have known how to respond to shouting or vituperation; she had no defenses against Simplice's simple purity. She nodded dumbly.

Without another word, Simplice took Fantine's thin arm in her own and turned them both towards the stairs.

* * *

The reader will already know what they found. A building solid but ill-kept, the rooms clean but the corners dusty, dirt swept under beds, mouse-holes in the corners, every economy taken where guests might not notice but money always short; the kitchen and its cupboards unremarkable but not too well stocked; a little boy, old enough to toddle, asleep in a dirty basket, not crying now; his older sisters in tidy dresses and caps and shawls, still rosy-cheeked from maternal indulgence. Their mother had not yet begun to drop upon her own daughters the blows she had once given Cosette. The little boy Gavroche bore the brunt of her anger, but he was asleep and could not complain of it to the strangers. Eponine and Azelma had lost Cosette as a playmate in infancy, as soon as her mother had set out down the road to Montreuil-sur-Mer, and thus to Valjean they had only lost a scapegoat.

"The Lark!" said Eponine, in childish scorn, when questioned. Azelma had never before seen a holy sister, and was somewhat inclined to be overawed. She hid behind her sister, peeking shyly over her shoulder, and I am sorry to say that her finger was in her mouth. "A funny old man took her away. He had a very ugly coat, and he was not at all our sort." This was a turn of phrase she had taken from her mother, and loved to use at every opportunity, though she was not quite certain what it meant. Thus she applied it very broadly. "She took my doll before that. I'm not sorry she left. She played with our doll! The little toad! The wretch! She was not allowed to touch our things, she knew that. She earned a proper whipping, but the old man took her."

"Bought her a doll," Azelma mumbled into her finger. This was still too great a wonder for her to be jealous; she could not comprehend it. To own that fine doll was marvel enough, but that Cosette might own her now! Azelma could not imagine that.

Eponine scowled, and pinched her sister. She had not said that on purpose. She was furious still. In her heart she had cherished the thought of that doll for months. If her parents did not buy it for her, she had dreamed, perhaps a passing stranger might take a fancy to her; he might say, "What a charming child she is! She has the air of a princess!" and give her the fine doll as a gift. That an old raggedy man had bought it for Cosette, and not for her, and then taken Cosette away entirely! It was beyond belief; it was an insult. And her father had been furious ever since. She blamed Cosette for that too.

Fantine was weeping in silence. Eponine and Azelma stole glances at her in which curiosity and sullen confusion were equally mingled. 

Simplice might have been carved of marble, a statue of dignified sorrow. "She was taken away?"

"At Christmas," Eponine answered, annoyed to be questioned. "I said that already. He said she would never come back. That was weeks ago. Why do you care?"

"I am her mother," whispered Fantine.

The girls were astounded. They stared.

"Thank you for your help," said Simplice, and sketched the sign of the cross. In her heart she was praying for Cosette, and for these small and sullen children.

The women left.

* * *

In the street they met with a miller's wife, short, broad, comfortable, red-cheeked, clad in sturdy clothes with a warm pelisse, inquisitive, rarely given to reflection, with the indiscriminate friendliness of the self-centered. A little lace added a touch of frivolity at the collar. Her name was Madame Langlois.

Simplice took charge once more. "We have come to retrieve a young girl whom the innkeepers of this town were charged with caring for. Do you know her?"

"The Lark?" Madame Langlois was astonished. "Whatever can you want with her? It will do you no good, in any case." She smiled when she said this. It is a great pleasure to have information another wishes, and to make them draw it out from you.

Simplice did not disappoint. "No good?"

"No good! She's gone. Poor Monsieur Thénardier, and his poor wife; it's hard for them without the extra worker. She was a queer little thing, you know, always quiet, and they tell me quite lazy -- well! It was good of them to take in a poor child like that for charity, that's what I say. Another mouth to feed, and times are hard, as you know, sister."

"Charity!" murmured Fantine in a broken rasp. "Charity!" It was all she could say.

"It was not charity," replied Simplice crisply. "They were paid well for it."

"What!" Madame Langlois had never conceived of such a notion. "Paid?"

"Paid."

"No, sister, you must be wrong. Forgive me, I don't mean anything rude by saying so, but you must see. The child was abandoned." (At this, Fantine gave a low cry.) "And now she has gone away. Poor M. Thénardier was very upset -- he raged at first, how he raged!" The woman shivered with the delicious horror of one untouched by personal fear. Those who suffer know more respect for anger. "Right out in the street. He has told all the town how their family misses her. It's a credit to them. I think they must miss her work more than anything, though, for she wasn't a very pleasant child. I never heard her laugh. Children ought to laugh, don't you think?"

"She is an angel!" cried Fantine. Her voice was hoarse and trembling with fury. The woman fell back a step in shock. "An angel, I tell you! Cosette is all joy, all gentleness, you do not know a thing!"

Simplice spoke coldly. "She was not abandoned. This good woman is her mother. She has been very ill. But now it is clear that the Thénardiers have no notion how to care for a child as good Christians ought. They would not send her to her mother, who asked for her and paid for the journey. They asked always for more money, and more after that. Perhaps you know what they did with those hundreds of francs, madame. I do not. Now they have given her away, and deprived her suffering mother of a child's comfort. You ought to have more Christian charity in your heart -- you ought to have more concern for a child suffering among you! Our Savior does. He commands us to do likewise. No doubt you have all told yourselves you had good reasons to turn away, but I am a simple sister, and I cannot imagine what they might be. If I had acted so, I would be on my knees to confess my shame. Well! Your reasons are between you and God, and we are all sinners. If you learn more of little Cosette's fate, please send word. My name is Simplice, I am a sister of the Lazarine order in Montreuil-sur-Mer. The postage will be paid for this kindness. If you know nothing else, we will leave now. Come, poor mother." She took Fantine's thin arm. She was half supporting her. "Poor woman! Your daughter is in kinder hands, I pray."

* * *

"Her grandfather!" cried Fantine when they were alone. She seemed to be in a daze. Her face was tracked with tears. "Her grandfather, that woman said! She has none from me. I never knew my parents, I'm sure they were virtuous but they died, I was a child without father or mother at all. I cannot understand it. Could her father -- I can't say his name, I will spit it if I do. I loved him so and he left. He left us both, sister. I could bear it for myself and love him still, but he left with never a thought for little Cosette. Could he have sought her out? I will forgive him anything if he did that."

"I do not think that innkeeper is honest," said Simplice. A harsh opprobrium; but a more judgmental soul would have said worse. "I'm sorry, Fantine. I do not think that man in truth claimed to be her grandfather."

She was very sorry to say it. It would have been dishonest to keep silent, but she was sorry.

Fantine spun. Her face, a moment ago empty, blazed with a fierce joy. "Oh!" she cried. Her thin fingers clutched at Simplice's arm. "Oh! Sister, I hope you're right. Don't you see? If her grandfather has taken her then that's good, he cares, he can provide for her, but I don't believe it. What if he forgets her as her father forgot me? He could turn her out to the street, my little dove, and I would have no notion where to look. That's why I wept, that and these horrible people's horrible tales of my poor Cosette's suffering. But don't you see, sister, if it's someone else, then the good mayor is behind it. I'm sure of it. Perhaps he came himself. Men can escape from prison, they sometimes do, you hear such things often from the newscriers on the streets of Paris. He has rescued my little angel, my darling Cosette. The mayor has taken her away from this awful place."

"Perhaps you're right." Simplice studied this thesis, and found it reasonable. "Yes -- perhaps you're right, indeed."

What did these women know of prisons? What did these women know of newspapers, and a convict named Jean Valjean who had been reported drowned in November? Neither read such things. 

They had faith. They believed in the goodness of Father Madeleine. Iron bars, stone walls, guards, chains, manacles: all these shatter at a touch, in the simple imagination of the ignorant. Both women knew much of the evils of the world, Simplice by remedying them, Fantine by suffering them, but in this way they were sheltered; they knew nothing of the convict's prison. To them, nothing seemed more reasonable than that Jean Valjean had contrived to rescue Cosette through mysterious means and resourceful generosity. Can we say they were wrong? 

Sometimes a little ignorance is like the glass bottom of a box held in water: it clarifies and illuminates. They understood the heart of the matter.

"But what shall I do now?" Fantine asked. She was trembling, from weariness and the shock of so many strong emotions. "I don't know where he has gone. My little angel, my poor Cosette! You saw that place, it was horrible. I never knew they were so bad. I would never have left her there, never. What can I do for her now?"

"You can get well," said Simplice firmly. It seemed to her a good first step upon any road needful. "Come, my dear. Let us return to Montreuil-sur-Mer. Perhaps the mayor will send word -- very likely he will -- and you must rest."

* * *

Fantine rested. The journey had exhausted her body and her heart, and she wept often, but she slept, took broth and food and wine, walked in the infirmary's tiny garden, sewed a little, slept more. She had lost her old hope, but clung to a new one: that she must be well enough to travel when Father Madeleine sent word of where he had brought Cosette.

Weeks passed. No word came.

Simplice returned often in her mind to her last conversation with Father Madeleine. She remembered abruptly a matter she had quite forgotten in the months of caring for Fantine. The mayor had implied then that he thought Fantine dead, stated it more clearly yet by leaving burial funds, and Simplice had not contradicted him. She had not lied to him, she had not even kept deliberately silent, but she had been too awhirl in that night's shocks and events, and Fantine had then seemed likely to die at any hour. She had not interrupted to make such a small correction. Now it did not seem so small.

She confessed this possibility to Perpétue, and then to Fantine.

Fantine took the news in silence, head bowed. She had been sewing a little cap for Cosette. Her fingers were still now, and she bent her head over them. Simplice was silent too.

"Then I will find her myself," said Fantine at last, in the low hoarse voice her long illness had left her. "I do not know where to look. But I will find my child."

What could Simplice say? She could only pray.

* * *

It was summer. Late July. The last harvests of winter wheat had been heaped into golden sheaves and carted away to barns, the spring crop stood green and tall. Sugar beets everywhere. Milk, fish, the perpetual leek, the revolutionary potato, summer radish. Calves grown nearly to weaning. A good summer for crops. The droughts and bad winters of '26 to '30 had not yet struck. Summer's ease had lightened the sufferings of the city.

Seven months had passed. Fantine remained convinced that Father Madeleine had rescued her child; Simplice remained in accord, Perpétue saw no reason to disagree, the curé voiced no opinion on the matter and endeavored to hold none; but it had become clear even to Fantine that word would not soon be forthcoming.

The infirmary needed her bed. No one would have said such a thing to Fantine, but she saw it for herself. She was well enough now to note such things. 

She was as well as perhaps she would ever be. She could walk without tiring, she could sew without eyestrain or headache, she could climb stairs again without a sister at her elbow. Every day she read her Bible; she had quite learned to read, though her spelling remained a little eccentric. There was some color in her cheeks again. She would never again look young, but she did not look so old as she had: her grey hair had regained a kind of shine, and she kept it tucked neatly beneath a little lace cap of the sort she had once worn to maintain a little of her vanity. Only her chest would always be a little weak.

Good harvests were insufficient. The factories of Mayor Madeleine had sickened or died. His charity before that. Montreuil-sur-Mer's prosperity was fading away.

In any case, Fantine could not bear the thought of seeking work in another factory in this town. Too many people knew her secrets, and judged her for them; too many had seen her in her darkest days. For Cosette she could have borne anything, but Cosette was supported by another now, and she had nowhere to send any wages. It was a moot point. There were no new jobs to be had. Not for a woman with a weak chest and a shameful past.

"You might join the order," said Simplice to her one day, as together they tore old bedsheets into strips of bandaging. "You would do well as a sister, my dear, if you wished to be one."

Fantine had thought of this often. She revered the sisters in her heart, Perpétue as well as Simplice. "No," she said. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I would love it, I think. But there's Cosette to think of. What if the mayor sends for me? What if I find her? I will leave anything for her, I shall run to her, I'll be her mother and care for her for all her days, I begrudge her nothing. It's not honest to take vows you mean to break at a word from someone else, it's not right. If it were only me I would. But it isn't, and so I can't."

Simplice smiled.

They worked on. Simplice began to roll up the bandages.

"I think," said Fantine, and stopped. Simplice looked at her with inquiry. "I think perhaps I should leave town. You and Sister Perpétue are the only things I have here. I would like to support myself. I would like to have more to offer my darling -- I will do anything she wants, I will give her anything she needs. But, oh! Oh, dear sister, I'm afraid. I can't bear the thought that I might miss any word of my angel. Will you -- if I write to you, please, will you write back? Will you send me word of anything that comes, anything at all? It would comfort me to hear from you. You are a saint, you are a friend. I never had a friend before, not really. I thought that I did. But now I know that I was wrong." She had crushed the bandaging in her thin hands.

Simplice reached out and covered Fantine's fretful fingers with her own. "Yes," she said, though she had been proud to set aside all reading and writing of letters in favor of her prayerbook. For Jean Valjean she had lied; for Fantine she would write. "Yes, my dear friend, I will write to you."

* * *

"Sister, I think perhaps -- I think perhaps I might go to Paris."

Fantine and Perpétue doing the infirmary's laundry. Perpétue was scrubbing linens with her strong red hands, her sleeves rolled to the elbow, her face red from heat, her sturdy body bent over a large tub and washboard. A cloud of steam and a strong smell of soap billowed around her. Fantine could not sustain such muscular work, but she had regained the strength for gentler chores. She was tending to the wash boiler.

" _Quo_!" said Perpétue, reverting to dialect in her surprise and straightening a little. "Paris!"

Fantine colored. "Do you think it foolish?"

"Foolish! No, _coulon_ , not foolish. I don't see the point of Paris -- such a city, it's too much for me, I've never wanted to see it -- everyone goes to Paris, that's what they say! Well, not me. Cozier towns are good enough for a simple sister from Marines. They say there are huge buildings and wonderful cathedrals there. It's beautiful, that's what I'm told. But you'd know that."

"Yes." Fantine began again to stir the boiling laundry. Her thin, melancholy face was troubled and thoughtful. "I was happy there once," she said at length. "I had my Cosette. I was young and foolish, but I was happy. Even after _he_ left us. --Being poor in a small town, it's awful, you feel everybody watching you. You feel they all know your secrets. They all say to themselves, 'That Fantine! She's a bad sort.' Maybe they don't, but you feel it. In Paris, you can go to the park on a bad day and you might never see anybody who knows you. And there are beautiful things all around. You think to yourself, 'At least I'm here! At least I have that!' I used to do it quite often when I first went there. I had my sewing, I had a little room, I had hope. I didn't know anyone then, but I didn't mind. I was vain and silly, but I had hope. Everything seemed so exciting. It won't be now, I know that, but maybe... maybe I could find some hope again. Some hope of my own, without the need to depend on anybody else for it. Is that terribly foolish to say? I can work again, honest work, you've seen that I can. I could sew, or clean, or do any simple little task, I'm not choosy. I won't do what I did before. I know better now, I don't want anything of the sort. I'll never fall to that again. But one feels as if one can begin again. That's what Paris does."

Perpétue looked at her with a tender affection which many of her patients would have been astonished to see. Perpétue's caring was deep, but rough, florid, brisk and loud; but Fantine would have drawn gentleness from a stone heart. "Poor lamb," she said. "Well then. You should go see your gardens and cathedrals again. That's what I say." Decisively, she scrubbed her handful of linen down the washboard.

* * *

A month later, Fantine boarded a coach to Paris. She had come to Montreuil-sur-Mer with little, and lived there with less and then with nothing; she left with a modest valise. Perpétue had sewed her a new dress, as a gift, and Simplice had made her stockings and a warm thick shawl. Fantine had wept to receive them. She had once had lace gloves, fine dresses, frills and sundries; these plain and sturdy gowns were twice as dear to her as any of her youthful wardrobe had been. She carried with her paper and postage-stamps, and a promise to write.

She carried as well recommendations, more valuable for her future than the finest clothing. Perpétue had a horde of relatives, and kept in contact with all of them. Some had moved south to Paris for work. She had sent letters, gathered responses, given Fantine a list. A childhood friend whose brother-in-law owned a shirt factory and might need another seamstress. A cousin who was a chandler. Another cousin, more distant, who was a domestic in a fine house, and might know of a place free in her employers' house or another. A nephew who knew a man who had a brother who owned a café and might need a dishwasher. Perpétue had written to them all with warm words about Fantine, and made copies of her letters for Fantine to carry.

The curé had been persuaded by appeals to both honesty and charity to give to Fantine a last store of the funds which had been left by Father Madeleine. It was enough for a quarter's rent, with money left over to keep Fantine in food and medicine for a month at least. Fantine had wept again when she was given the money, and promised over and over that she would live frugally, she would be a good and virtuous woman, she would tell them of her address and write often. Simplice had embraced her, and found her own eyes wet. Perpétue sniffled without shame, and without ceasing to smile. She gave Fantine a little purse which she had crocheted herself. "In this is the fare for a coach from Paris to Montreuil-sur-Mer," said Perpétue. "You keep it, _tio coulon_. If you need to, you can always come back to us. You have a home here."

"I know it," said Fantine, weeping. She kissed both sisters on the cheeks again and again; she clasped their hands tightly. "You cannot know how much I value it. Oh, you are my dearest friends. God bless you, sisters. God bless you. You are saints, you are holy, you are a blessing! You have given me my life again, you and the blessed mayor. You cannot know what it is to lose so much, but I tell you I will never forget what you have done for me. God bless you!"

She held her little Bible in her lap as the coach bounced down the road. She wept again, with sorrow and joy mingled, both swelling in her heart like a flower unfolding. Her hands wrapped around the Bible kept her tears from falling on the paper. The road unfurled before her.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I'm not sure Fantine's hair would actually have gone so thoroughly grey, but Victor Hugo seems sure (unless that's a translation error), so I will go with it. Nineteenth Century Narrative Wasting Disease has a wide variety of symptoms, after all!
> 
> 2) I have no idea what a French-language Bible would have cost in 1824. Five sous is me throwing up my hands and guessing wildly!
> 
> 3) Eugène de Rothelin is the eponymous protagonist of an 1808 novel by D'Adele de Senange (aka Madame de Souza, aka some other things, because she was a marquise and her full name is enormously long.) I haven't read it, and I'm not sure if this is the equivalent of saying that Cosette's mysterious grandfather is named Sirius Black or something slightly more obscure. Either way, Madame Thénardier is displaying lots of chutzpah and zero shame.
> 
> 4) Perpétue's dialect is Picard, aka Ch'ti, which as far as I can tell is the dialect spoken in Marines. She calls Fantine "(little) dove." I wanted to use more, since she's canonically fond of it, but it's surprisingly hard to find a handy lexicon of exclamations a 19th century nun might make. Who'd've thought?


End file.
